The groom and his pals had started out in the Twin Cities and stopped off in Winona to pick up a few more partygoers when they found a body in an exterior compartment of the RV they had rented.

Jake Wanek, of Minneapolis, told the newspaper the first hint of trouble came when someone opened one side of the compartment and there was a foul odour. He said when someone opened the other side he saw the body. It “didn’t look fresh. Let’s put it that way,” he said.

The body has since been identified as 22-year-old Kevin Casserly of Anoka, Minnesota. Casserly had been missing since November.

No information on the cause of death has been released.

A member of the group, John Kirk, told the Star Tribune that the RV’s owner had cautioned against opening the front compartments because they didn’t work.

Groom-to-be Dan Trainor, of Rochester, told the newspaper that the whole episode “was like we were in the middle of a movie.”

The friends made new plans to return to Minneapolis to watch the Derby on TV at Canterbury Park. That’s the Canterbury Park Racecourse in Minnesota obviously, not the one in Sydney.

For the record, this year’s Derby was won by the favourite California Chrome.

CLP cabinet minister John Elferink charged taxpayers more than $45,000 for a ‘study trip’ to the United States over the Christmas holidays, including visits to Cape Canaveral Space Base and Universal Studios.